Paper short abstract:

Audiovisuals technics used as a Participatory methodology allow me to establish a newer relation with the informants on one side, and are a tool to promote changes for and with the participants, on the other

Paper long abstract:

Starting from my PhD fieldwork I have broadly studied through the use of Audiovisuals and Arts a range of issues in the context of Melilla, a Spanish enclave situated in Northern Africa, on the Europe's border zone. Through qualitative analysis, I researched into the way a wide variety of migrants living in a Camp, rebuilt their lives in this limbo. I used participant observation, interviews and especially Audiovisuals through a Participatory approach; i.e. I worked with migrants on photo voice, participatory video and radio workshops in which they narrate and debate in groups about different aspects of their lives abroad. Besides, I used photo elicitation technics during my interviews. Based on my first fieldwork, I started using Audiovisuals and Art as Participatory approaches in a PAR project titled Marcaré/Kahina in the suburbs of Melilla with the Berber-Imazighen communities so to ameliorate these areas promoting visibility of these groups; and to study coexistence in the city, where communities of people from the Spanish penínisula and other populations from Imazighen origins coexist. The use of a participatory methodology, in the two research projects allowed me to get in a deeper contact with the informants. Participatory approaches on the other side, promotes change for and with the participants and the audiovisual techniques, in this context, apply for their creativity and innovation. Finally, this methodology gives the chance to move academia outside, to a wider audience allowing the Anthropologist to mix actively in the practical life.